【推荐1】The Happiness Effect

Most of us have heard the term “runner’s high”, but what exactly does this mean? Exercise creates chemical responses in the brain, which leads to both temporary and long-term mental health benefits. Here is how it works:

What happens when we are stressed?

Cortisol: This stress hormone (压力荷尔蒙) is linked to mood, motivation and fear. It also alters immune system (免疫系统) responses and suppresses the digestive system (消化系统).

Adrenaline: This stress hormone raises your heart rate, elevates blood pressure, and boosts energy stores.

Hypothalamus: This region of the brain is the body’s natural alarm system which stimulates the production of cortisol and adrenaline.

Hippocampus: Too much cortisol short-circuits (使……中断) cell production in the brain’s hippocampus region, damaging thought organization and memory formation.

Feeling overwhelmed? Hit the gym!

As your heart begins to pound, your brain chemistry reacts almost immediately to get you feeling better both physically and mentally.

Brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF): BDNF protects the brain from emotional disorders and repairs damage from stress and depression.

GABA: Exercise lowers stress levels, which triggers the release of this calming neurotransmitter (神经递质). Frequent boosts of GABA build immunity to stress, enhancing your ability to take on life’s challenges.

Endocannabinoids: These natural chemical compounds play a role in processing appetite, pain sensation, mood and memory. They are very closely related to the active ingredients of the cannabis (大麻) plant.

Endorphins: Endorphins naturally get most of the credit for feelings of extreme happiness, but they play only a small part in the exercise-induced rush. These pain fighting peptides increase with as little as 20 minutes of exercise.

1. Which of the following statements is true?

A．During a 1000m race, one’s adrenaline level will stay still.

B．When someone came across a roaring dog, his or her hypothalamus may be simulated.

C．Cortisol is a hormone that can deal with stress efficiently.

D．Bad mood will not hurt the hippocampus region any way.

2. Which of the following hormones functions little when someone comes to a terrible failure?

A．Brain derived neurotropic factor.	B．GABA.
C．Endocannabinoids.	D．Endorphins.

3. Where can we probably find this passage?

A．In a scientific journal.

B．In an advertisement about medical product.

C．In a nutritional biochemistry magazine.

D．In a sport magazine.

【推荐2】Diversity comes in many forms: gender, race, age, culture, etc. All of these contribute to an individual's unique experience of the world. Here are some reasons why it is significant in all aspects of our lives.

Productivity

Bringing together people of various backgrounds lead to new ideas.     1     When tackling an issue, wouldn't it be better to have more than one understanding approach, rather than everyone contributing the same thoughts and conclusions?

Becoming a World Citizen

If you experience diversity in your everyday life, you will be regularly exposed to people, cultures, traditions, and practices that are unlike your own. Not only will you improve your social development, but you will also increase your understanding of the world.     2    

Growing Acceptance

Promoting diversity is the first step to true acceptance. Through growing contact with, and communication between new people, individuals may see that they may have more in common than they thought.    3     And that is okay, too! Increasing familiarity with these differences can facilitate acceptance.

Richer Life Experience

Diversity is colorful! What if everyone who surrounded you was exactly like you, in every way?    4     We need new ideas, views, and practices to stimulate and inspire us, to show us the way others eat, celebrate, and love!

We must not forget to spread the word about the importance of diversity and to face the world with a love and a celebration of our differences.    5    

A．Where is the fun in that?

B．Or, they may still be remarkably different.

C．Everyone has their own way of viewing a problem.

D．This will prepare you to be a part of a global society.

E．Is diversity something we should fight for in all aspects of our lives?

F．Hearing about another's experience can provide you a different idea.

G．Together, our differences make a strong and beautiful world community.

【推荐3】Unlike well-trained dogs that are able to distinguish (辨别) between common orders like “sit” and “stay”, some “Gifted Word Learner” dogs can associate objects with words.

One year ago, Shany Dror and her colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary discovered that some dogs have an obviously excellent natural ability to acquire object names. To study this further — how many words they can learn in a certain period of time and whether they can still remember the words after an extended period — they looked for more “Gifted Word Learner” dogs online and, in the end, they found six qualified dogs.

The researchers sent each dog’s owner six new toys. Owners then had six days to teach their dogs the names of the toys with their usual methods. These generally involved playing with the dog and each toy, often for just half an hour a day. At the end of the six-day learning period, the research team used online video conferencing to test the dogs’ abilities to pick out each toy by name from a number of old and new toys. Each owner sat with their dog in one room and told them to fetch a given toy from a second room. All the dogs successfully brought back at least five of the six new toys. The team then sent another 12 new toys and repeated the process. All the dogs successfully brought back at least 11 of the toys.

Afterwards, half the new toys were stored for one month, and the other half for two months, and the dogs were tested again after each storage period. Five of the dogs remembered all the toy names after one month, and four dogs remembered all or almost all of them after two months.

Dror says these dogs which are raised in the home like human children, provide an excellent animal model (模式) for studying the way humans acquire language. An animal model offers a basis of comparison for understanding which language-learning skills are specific to humans, and which aren’t. “We want to understand what makes humans different,” says Dror.

1. What is the research mainly about?

A．Dogs’ daily behaviors.

B．Dog training methods.

C．Dog-human relationship.

D．Dogs’ learning ability.

2. What is the reason the six dogs were chosen for the research?

A．Their talent for learning object names.

B．Their ability to recognize human voice.

C．Their tendency to follow human orders.

D．Their intelligence to interact with human.

3. The six dogs learned the toy names through ________.

A．video games

B．continuous training

C．counting toys

D．playing outdoors

【推荐1】In the mid-1990s, Dr. Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University, was asked to help explore ceremonies in American families. “There was a lot of research at the time into the falling apart of the family,” he said. “But we were more interested in what families could do to oppose those forces.” And they found that the single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative(口述故事).

Around that time, Dr. Duke’s wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students. “The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges,” she said.

Her husband was interested, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to learn if Sara’s assumption was valid. They developed a measure called the “Do You Know?” scale(量表)that asked children to answer 20 questions. Examples included: Do you know where you grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family?

Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and   taped several of their dinner table conversations. They then compared children’s results to a series of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached a surprising conclusion. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives and the higher their self-respect. Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child become tougher and happier? “The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Duke said.

So if you want a happier family, retell the story of your family, especially about the positive moments and how you braved the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the probability that your family will thrive ( 兴 旺 )for many generations to come. This is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

1. What research topic attracted Dr. Duke most in the mid-1990s?

A．Why families fell apart?	B．How to keep families united?
C．Why family ceremonies existed?	D．How to preserve family tradition?

2. Why did Duke and Fivush develop the “Do You Know?” scale?

A．To explore learning disabilities	B．To study family challenges
C．To test Sara’s assumption	D．To research family illness

3. What may be linked with kids’ mental health according to Duke?

A．The frequency of dinner table conversations.	B．The knowledge about their family history.
C．The sense of control over their schoolwork.	D．The belief in their family’s success.

4. What does the underlined word “This” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．Telling family stories	B．Having a thriving stories
C．Living in a happy family	D．Braving the difficult moments

5. What is the purpose of this text?

A．To solve a problem	B．To give expert advice
C．To tell an interesting story	D．To present a research result.

【推荐3】Most funny stories are based on comic situations. In spite of national differences, certain funny situations have a universal attraction. No matter where you live, you would find it difficult not to laugh at, say Charlie Chaplin’s early films. However, a new type of humour, which starts largely from the US, has recently come into fashion. It is called “sick humour”.

Comedians base their jokes on tragic situations like violent deaths or serious accidents. The following “sick humour” will enable you to amuse yourself.

A man who had broken his right leg was taken to hospital a few weeks before Christmas From the moment he arrived there, he kept on bothering his doctor to tell him when he would be able to go home. He was afraid of having to spend Christmas in hospital. Though the doctor did his best, the patient’s recovery was slow. On Christmas Day, the man still had his right leg in plaster(石膏).

He spent a miserable day in bed thinking of all the fun he was missing. The following day, however, the doctor consoled him by telling him that his chances of being able to leave hospital in time for New Year celebrations were good. The man took heart and, sure enough, on New Year’s Eve he was able to hobble(蹒跚) along to a party. To make up for his unpleasant experiences in hospital, the man drank a little more than what was good for him. In the process, he enjoyed himself thoroughly and kept telling everybody how much he hated hospitals. He was still murmuring something about hospitals at the end of the party when he slipped on a piece of ice and broke his left leg.

1. What can we infer from the passage?

A．No pains,no gains.

B．Extreme joy begets sorrow.

C．Once a thief,always a thief.

D．Good medicine tastes bitter.

2. What’s the main idea of the passage?

A．A new kind of humour came into being.

B．How to cure your legs is important.

C．Christmas is more necessary than anything else.

D．Holding a party is interesting for the westerners.

3. Which of the following is RIGHT according to the passage?

A．All the humour stories are funny in spite of different nationalities.

B．One can realise the humour of the stories in his own country.

C．Charlie Chaplin made it difficult to laugh at his action.

D．Almost all the audience can be made to laugh at some famous comedians’ action.

4. What does the underlined word “consoled” mean?

A．Comforted.	B．Overcame.
C．Confused.	D．Disturbed.